


Day by Day This Pathway Smooths

by CiderApples



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 03:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10800510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiderApples/pseuds/CiderApples
Summary: Jughead's birthday party is a disaster.Sometimes the past haunts us; sometimes we haunt ourselves.





	Day by Day This Pathway Smooths

It all happened so fast.

Chuck was talking - and talking, and talking - and his words were exactly the words Betty was afraid to hear.

He was waving her black wig like a flag in the plain light of Archie's living room, while Jughead stood frozenin dark relief against the wall. Betty was afraid to look at him. Her face was burning slowly up from the neck, like a piece of paper being consumed by a line of ember, as she waited to see how this disaster would end: how her very  _existence_  in Riverdale would end.

But then it all exploded. It was Jughead, first: red-eyed and tight-shouldered, pushing off in a wild, haphazard arc to sling his entire body fist-first into Chuck’s face. The sight of it started a motor in Betty’s chest: something deep and angry and vengeful, something that said,  _yes, more_. She wanted blood. She wanted Chuck destroyed. But it only took a second for Chuck to get up, scrape around and haul Jughead up by the collar. His fist twisted up in Jug's shirt until it bit into his neck, yanking him off the ground, leaving only Jug's toes brushing the rug, but Jughead's face showed nothing. He steeled himself with slitted eyes like he always did when someone tried to hurt him, and may or may not have made a sound when Chuck sent him flying across the room, a dark smear with a white center that sprawled cheekbone-first into a crash of popcorn and red cups and table.

In the shockwave of Jughead's collapse, FP came fighting through the crowd, destabilizing the delicate post-punch thrall, and in his wake the room rioted, tossing up into a wall-thumping scuffle. Betty — in a sort of transcendent panic — went blank. She forgot to help Jughead, who was crawling along the floor, picking glass and popcorn out of the folds of his sweater; she forgot about Archie, whose house was being destroyed; and she forgot (as a mercy, as something she allowed herself because the situation was so, so far beyond her control) that it was  _her_  party,  _her_  mess, and  _her_  responsibility.

She ran away.

She ran all the way to the backyard, out to the old apple tree she used to climb.

By the time she'd hidden herself, Jughead's dad —  _god, his dad_  — was yelling from the front of the house, telling everyone to go home, clear out.

“Shit,” she whispered, which changed nothing. She'd asked FP to come, and he had. He’d shown up. He’d even brought a present. And this was what he got: to clean up her mess. Just like Jughead, with Chuck. 

And then Jughead's voice carried back. He sounded ragged. Furious. With her? Probably. Who else? She tried to see into the front yard past the branches and shrubs, but all she could make out were the silhouettes: FP, standing on the sidewalk with his hands out, making some kind of entreaty to the shape that was Jughead while blue and gold jackets scattered into the distance behind them.

What was he saying? Telling Jughead exactly what he thought of his new girlfriend? Telling him he should get as far away as he possibly could? Who could blame him, at this point?

She waited to see if Jughead would take his advice, but answers were not readily forthcoming.

The two of them moved toward the front of the house, out of her view.

The sidewalk emptied as she watched and waited. Girls in their heels clip-clipped down the street. An anonymous figure carried off one of the kegs into the fog. Little smartphone foxfires hovered in the dark long after their owners’ silhouettes had merged with the dark. FP’s truck started, then growled off, and when it was long gone, Betty still hadn’t seen Jughead Jones.

So he was in there, still; in the house somewhere.

Was he waiting for her? Or was he hiding, himself? Either way, she had to show her face. She owed him that much, if not so much more.

She opened the back door, lifting the knob the way she knew to keep it from making a noise, and wandered like a ghost into the aftermath of her own little apocalypse.

The house was still liquid with music. Someone’s phone was still hooked up to Mr. Andrew’s stereo, thumping through an endless playlist. It wasn’t Archie’s phone. Not his music.

As she moved through the almost-empty house, vaguely-familiar stragglers wove around her, still gathering sweaters and bags and half-empty beers for the walk home. Did she even  _know_  these people? In the kitchen, a complete stranger was taking food out of the fridge, and the look she gave him was so filled with fury that he left the plate where he stood and ran for the back porch.

The table in the deserted living room lay broken in the shape of a body. A carpet of popcorn was crushed and shaped by the sweeps of someone getting up from the floor, and a few pieces were spotty with blood.

In the garage, Betty found the plate that Jughead had left behind. Two candles and a swipe of frosting were all that remained of the cake. If she ever had the chance again, she was going to bake him the biggest cake he’d ever seen. She was going to bring it to the smoker’s table behind the Bijoux and sit there after the double feature and eat with him until it was gone. She’d sit there all night if that’s what he wanted.

She left the plate where it lay and peeked into both bathrooms, not allowing herself to be distracted by the mess, the spills, the empties that begged to be picked up and recycled. After all the looking was done, there was only one place left for Jughead to be.

Archie’s bedroom.

Hallowed ground.

She held her breath when she knocked on Archie’s door. Jughead was in there, and maybe Archie was, too. They might be talking about her. They might go silent and look at her if she walked in; a sure sign. They might even say she should go, and even if they said it nicely - even if they said,  _I just think we should let Jughead cool off a little -_  it might be the final nail in tonight's little coffin.

She knocked again, and when she didn’t hear a single word, she pushed. The door budged open under her hand, so she pushed a little more, until she could see inside.

Jughead was coiled up on the floor, a lanky archipelago of elbows and knees attached to Archie’s TV by the cord of a controller. He had music playing, softly. Something mournful. Or, like he’d said before: haunting.

“Jughead?” she said.

He did nothing to acknowledge her presence, except to speak: “What, no black wig for little ol’ me?”

His voice sounded as wrong as she felt, but Betty didn’t flinch. She stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.

She wasn’t used to seeing Archie’s room in the dark. When was the last time? A sleepover? A movie night? And it wasn’t completely dark, now — the TV glowed and the streetlights reached through the blinds — but it was like Jughead had brought more dark with him. Extra, to spare.

The floor was a minefield of Archie’s stuff that she had to step around: Archie’s clothes. Archie’s shoes. Archie’s comics. Archie’s sheet music. Archie wasn’t there, but they weren’t alone. Jughead was swimming in a sea of Archie Andrews. Treading water.

Betty paused a few feet from the bed, and waited. When Jughead spoke again, it startled her.

“I’d ask you to stay, but-” He wiggled the controller half-heartedly. “Single player.”

She wasn't sure if he meant it more than literally. Even still, she couldn't retreat. She moved deeper.

The whole room smelled like boy: not quite Jug, not quite Archie, with a little pizza thrown in the mix. But the scent of things changed as she got closer to Jughead. It clarified: became less Archie, and more him. He smelled old, like old wood, like old furniture, like he carried the movie theater with him in effigy. And by the time she got close enough to see the knit of his beanie, Betty thought she could smell something else, too — but it had to be something she’d carried with her from downstairs, because it was something Jughead would never smell like. Not in a million years.

He must have sensed her scrutiny. He looked up at her: all the way up, so she could see the cut across his cheek.

“Another birthday for the scrapbook,” he said. He didn’t say,  _and I’ve got you to thank for it_. He didn’t have to. Her chin dropped to her chest.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

For a moment, he didn’t respond, and then he sighed so deeply it was like a hundred breaths at once. His shoulders slipped slightly out of their tension, and he paused his game, resting the controller on his knee. “I know,” he said, quietly. “But you could’ve just taken my word for it.”

“I will,” she said. “Next time.”

His mouth quirked: not a smile, not a frown, but something in between.

“Right,” he said. He stared at the television again and let his eyes sink into the screen. There was something not quite right about his gaze: something weak, something not-all-there. “Well,  _next time_ ,” he echoed her, in a slightly darker tone, “throw Chuck the party and give me the handcuffs.”

Betty frowned. She knew he was trying to be funny, like he always did, like he couldn't  _help_  but do, but it still stung. She’d tried. She’d fucking  _tried_. Embarrassment and anger: they felt so similar at the moment that Betty wasn’t sure which was which.

“Look, I’m sorry I threw you a party,” she said, “but, honestly, if birthdays are your biggest problem— There are worse problems to have, Jughead.”

He tipped his head to the side, incredulous. Two unfriendly eyebrows raised. “Like what? Like yours, Betty Cooper? Tell me. Tell me about your problems.”

She boiled inside. “At least you don’t have to put on a wig and take off your clothes just to get people to listen to you,” she hissed.

His gaze turned to her in a lazy swivel, angling his bruised face into the television’s glow. His stare was cold and pointed. “No, I don’t. I guess I just have to bleed a little.”

Betty didn’t know what to say. It was like she wasn’t even talking to Jughead anymore. Something was wrong with him. Something was so wrong with him.

“What is going  _on_  with you,” she whispered. But he didn’t answer; just dissolved himself back into the television.

Betty didn’t want to give up. She couldn’t give up. But the deadness in Jughead’s face was becoming more apparent the longer she looked, becoming almost too unnerving to witness. Her eyes reached desperately around the room for something, anything else to focus on, just for a minute, just to collect her thoughts, and the thing she found was almost hidden from view under Archie’s bed, behind a book and a sock.

Once she saw it, she couldn’t look away. She knew why he seemed all wrong, and it made her insides suspend, like she’d been dropped from a great height.

“Juggie,” she whispered. She felt frozen but forced the steps until she was close enough to kneel in front of him. “Look at me.”

He wouldn’t. The corners of his mouth turned determinedly down. So she reached under Archie’s bed and pulled out the bottle, and put it gently in his lap. 

Jughead bit his lip. He didn’t speak.

Betty reached out and curled her hand over the arm closest to her, in the spot where his skin showed under his pushed-up sleeve. She smelled that impossible smell, again, the smell that she should never smell on Jughead. Except, tonight, she did. And if she kissed him, she knew she’d taste it.

“Did you…?”

“I don’t drink,” he said, reflexively. But he didn’t say, ‘no.’

“Juggie,” she said again. She went slow. She knew the answer. She didn’t want it, but she knew it. “Are you drunk?”

He blinked, slowly. Hung his head.

“No,” he said.

She wanted to believe him. But.

“Jughead, don’t-” she said, before he jerked his arm away from her. She grabbed it back but he kept it tense, a tight bow that she had to struggle to keep. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not,” he snapped, in a tone he’d never used with her before. It was angry, and it was miserable, and the way his shoulders knit up around his ears and the way his eyes narrowed and hid under his falling hair reminded her of a scared animal and suddenly he just seemed…pathetic. It chipped a piece out of her righteous anger, and then another.

She relaxed her hold on his wrist, and in some kind of unspoken quid pro quo he let it stay there, resting in the ring of her hand. Gently, she began to move her thumb over the pale heel of his palm, that blank soft space, until she felt the tendons twitch in his wrist: his fingers moving in response.

When she put her hand in his, he squeezed. Harder than she thought he could.

“I’m not drunk,” he repeated, quiet and low. “I had a little. But I’m not drunk.” He glanced at her sidelong with his eyes like rainbows — yellow and red from the fight and dark at the bottom where they always were, like he hadn’t slept well since he was five — but his gaze didn’t stick. “Spare me the lecture.”

“I don’t have a lecture,” she said. “I just… Juggie, why?”

He nodded. She had to ask. Any sane person would.

“I really, really hate birthdays?” he offered. It was just lame deflection at this point, unfunny and uncalled-for, and it was practically an invitation for her to get angry again, to start accusing: why couldn’t he just be honest with her without making everything into some dark joke? But Betty didn’t yell. She watched him, quiet and luminous in the dark, the shine of her eyes visible even in his peripheral vision. And he had to say more. “It’s…tradition.”

“Cake and ice cream is a tradition, Jug,” she said, gently.

“For you, maybe.” He took a deep, heavy breath and let his head fall back.

His music went on in the background, expansive and soft.

“My dad didn’t start drinking because Archie’s dad fired him,” he said, slowly. Taking his time. “He was like that as long as I could remember. On and off.”

His hand relaxed slightly in hers, like anesthesia kicking in. “The first birthday I remember — I mean, really remember — was big number eight, and it was a fucking disaster.” She started to say,  _I’m sorry_ , or,  _you didn’t deserve it,_  but he cut her off. “Not because of him,” he said. “It was  _me_. My fault.”

Her forehead furrowed. “You were  _eight_.”

“I was an old eight.”

“Nobody’s that old.”

“I was,” he said. He frowned and scuffed a heel along the floor. “I’d had my first sleepover. Archie’s house. And, I mean, that part wasn’t too bad: Mr. Andrews took me out to Speedy’s and bought me as much pizza as I could eat, which was his mistake. You should’ve seen the look on his face.” He smiled. “But when I got home in the morning, it was like…another universe. My mom was gone. She’d taken JB somewhere. This was right around the time we lost the house, and they’d been fighting. And who knows what else. So dad was already in a bad mood.”

“And he took it out on you?”

“Not exactly.” His face remained impassive, but she could sense something underneath. “Actually, it was the opposite. Like, I could tell he was upset, but he faked it like he wasn’t. Like he was excited; like he really cared. And all I did was…” He exhaled. “All I did was ask when mom was coming home, because I didn’t want to have a birthday with just  _him_.”

He paused, and Betty thought he was done. “That’s not so bad,” she said. But the corner of his smile curled up sardonically.

“But wait,” he said, like an self-effacing informercial. “There’s more.”

She went quiet.

“I don’t know why,” he said, “but I just got so  _angry_  — like I thought he’d driven her away on purpose, on my birthday. Because, you know, you don’t get that your parents are people. It was just some big conspiracy to wreck my birthday. And I told him so, along with a bunch of other stuff that I don’t really want to reminisce about, and I went to my room and slammed the door and swore I wouldn’t come out until my mom came home.

“Except she didn’t come home. And I was… fucking starving, I guess, so I tried to sneak out down the hall — maybe I was going to try and make it to Archie’s, I don’t remember, but he must have heard the door open. He must have been listening, for god knows how long. And he, like, intercepted me in the hallway, put his hands on my shoulders and told me to cover my eyes. So I do, and he walks me down the hall into the kitchen, and I’m thinking, maybe this whole thing was a big joke and my mom is sitting right there, JB too, and there’re presents and cake and it’s all—” He paused here, and looked straight at her. “—normal. Because you’re not the only one who wants normal.”

“What was in the kitchen?” Betty asked. She wanted to know, but she didn’t. Once she knew, she’d have to carry it with her, like he did.

“He’d…” he sighed, painfully, and glanced away. “He’d set up the table with, you know, one of those plastic tablecloths with footballs or rocket ships or something. Little plates from some previous birthday, but just two of them, with little… little cans of soda with little straws in ‘em. And in the middle there was this — I hesitate to call it a  _cake_ , but he’d clearly tried his best. It looked like a giant cupcake with the frosting melting off. I don’t think he realized he was supposed to use two pans, so the thing was all… you get the picture. He must have started on it as soon as I’d slammed my door. He must have spent  _hours_.”

His hand re-clenched, just a single pulse of knuckle-crushing force.

“So what did I do?” He turned to her. “What did I do, Betty Cooper?”

Her mouth tight-lined. He produced something that looked like a smile but was its opposite in every way.

“He started singing happy birthday, and I started walking. I walked out of the kitchen, out of the house, down the street and all the way to the drive-in. And I watched everything, as long as I possibly could, until it got so cold I was basically just standing under the hand dryers in the bathroom, and when I finally got home — because I had to go, not because I was ready — I was still mad. I was still mad at him.

“I snuck in through my window, and figured I could just go to sleep and forget birthdays ever existed, but he heard me. He always heard me. And he popped the lock on my door — it was one of those you can do with a dime — and he came in with two shots in his hand. In little shot glasses. And he just shoved that thing in my face in a way that was like, there was no saying, ‘no thanks’.

"He looked at me and said:  _Better get used to it, ‘cause it doesn’t get better._  And he shot his, so I shot mine, cue the coughing (me) and laughing (him) and that was that; that was my birthday.” Jughead’s grip faltered again, almost to nothing. He sighed toward the ceiling, all hollow eyes and shameful smile. “So I made that my birthday tradition. Mostly out of spite, but when I figured out my old man was an alcoholic, I guess that put a new sheen on it.”

Betty slipped her hand away and threaded her arm under his, around his ribs, and pressed her cheek to his shoulder. His breath resonated through his bones and hers and she could hear his heart’s uneven, nervous leaping.

“Someday, Betts,” he said, “I'm going to pick up that drink I can’t put down. Maybe. And that scares me to death.”

“Then don’t,” she said, like if she protested sincerely enough it’d make a difference. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” It wasn’t a dig at her; it was as self-deprecating as it could be. “Especially considering the big flashing leitmotif that is my father.”

“So why do it? You could go your whole life without-”

“No, I couldn’t. I can't. I know it seems stupid — no, it doesn’t  _seem_  stupid; it  _is_  stupid — but I can’t live with that kind of uncertainty. It’s like I know there’s a monster out there and I can’t just… wait around. I need to know if it’s coming for me.”

Betty’s attention sprawled unfocused into the dark. She thought about the black wig that was hiding, right now, under her bed. How she’d felt when she’d put it on. How she’d wanted to know what would come out of the dark, if given the chance. She thought that maybe she and Jughead were more alike than he knew.

They breathed together for a while.

Eventually, she worked up the courage to ask another question.

She whispered it as softly as she could.

“Do you like it?”

He hung his head, accepting the question. The shock of black hair that never fit into his beanie fell down over his face. But then he pushed it back, and shook his head.

“No,” he said. He sounded relieved. “I hate it.”

And that was nice to hear. But it didn’t make Betty feel better at all.

“I can feel you thinking,” he said, into her silence. He reached across himself and put two prognosticating fingers to her forehead. “You’re thinking…how stupid can one kid be?”

He was trying to be funny again. It wasn’t working.

“Maybe I am,” she said.

“You’re thinking...maybe you can save me," he went on. "What's your plan? Milkshakes with my girlfriend instead of shots in the dark? A happy new birthday tradition for sad old Jughead Jones?" 

She recoiled a little at that, and Jughead knew he’d been right on the money. He smiled when she didn't.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I wouldn’t’ve expected anything less. It’s that Cooper in you. But you know what they say, Betts: You can take the boy out of the Jones, but you can’t take the Jones out of the boy.”

Betty went impenetrably quiet for a long time.

Jughead stretched his legs, one at a time.

And then, she asked: “Does Archie know?”

“No,” he said. “Archie does not.”

“Why not? I thought you guys were-”

“We are. We are; it’s just… not the kind of thing that comes up in conversation.”

“Don’t you think it should?”

“Not really.”

She frowned.

“C’mon, Betts, what good would it do?”

“You could… talk. About things.”

“About what? My Schroedinger’s alcoholism? My long slow slide into the Lovecraftian pit where I turn into all the things I hate most in the world?” He scoffed. “Yeah. Sounds like Archie’s gig. Practically pillow talk.”

“Well, you told  _me_ ,” she said.

“I didn’t tell you. You found out.”

She tilted her head such that her golden ponytail curled on her shoulder like a kitten.

“So, if I hadn’t found out,” she said, “would you have told me?”

She held still, eyes wide for an answer.

If only he were physically capable of lying to her.

“No,” he admitted.

She winced.

“I’m sorry; that’s the truth.” He shrugged. “I’m enough to deal with already.”

“But I want to know these things about you, Jug,” she said.

“No you don’t.”

“Yeah, I do. That’s why we’re-”

“Betty,” he interrupted. He ran a hand through that shock of hair. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re…good.” Only from Jughead could that word sound so insulting. “And I’m-”

“-a ‘bad boy’?” she finished, pulling her hands from him to air quote everything. “A ‘dangerous loner’ from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’?”

He squinted. Brought back that half-smile again. “I was going to say, kind of a drag.”

_Oh._

He arched both eyebrows. “And, in the interest of holding on to literally the  _only_  friend I never want to punch in the face, I try not to tell you the kinds of things that’ll look at me like you’re looking at me right now.”

She arched her eyebrows right back. “Yeah? How am I looking at you?”

“Like the shelter’ll throw in a free leash and a week’s worth of food to whoever takes me first. Which is to say, pathetic.”

“You’re not pathetic,” she said.

“I know,” he said. Then, softer: “I know.”

He held her gaze pointedly.

For a minute, they watched each other in stalemate.

Then time passed.

They calmed.

Their focus drifted.

And, out of nowhere, as Betty studied Archie’s newest posters, Jughead asked: “Why ‘Rebel Without a Cause’?”

It took Betty a second just to realize he’d asked her a question.

“For the last drive-in,” he prompted. “Why’d you pick it? I mean, at the time, I thought you just picked a classic off the top of your head. But then I thought, maybe it meant something to you.”

He didn’t really give her time to answer. He had his own.

“And then, after the thing with Chuck, the pieces kind of fell into place: a little Judy in a Frank-and-Carol world. Trying to define yourself in opposition to a world that used to embrace you unquestioningly. Looking at people you used to know and realizing you don’t, anymore. Maybe you don’t even know yourself. And it starts to feel like the safest thing to do is lash yourself to another misunderstood weirdo like a… weird, dark island.”

He side-eyed her to see how he was doing.

She was peering at him with a fixed little smile that said  _wrong, wrong, wrong_.

“‘Like a weird, dark island?’” she repeated.

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, so what, then?”

She thought about it. How her answer might sound out loud. But he’d asked.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “It was the car race. The chicken thing.”

“Chickie run.”

“Whatever.” She smoothed her hands over her head and back along her ponytail. “I saw it on TV once, right before I went to bed. Just that part, though; just the race. I didn’t even know what movie it was. Just the two guys, in the cars, going toward the cliff. And his- his little jacket thing gets stuck on the door, and he can’t get out in time, and he goes over. I don’t know what it was about that, but I had nightmares for weeks.

“And then,” she went on, “a couple of months ago, after Polly went away, I had that same nightmare again. The two cars. The jacket.” She made her hand sail off the cliff of Jughead’s knee and explode on his shoe below. He smiled from the touch unselfconsciously, like he didn’t know he was smiling.

“Freud or Jung?” he asked. “And are you the brooding James Dean or the doomed Corey Allen?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I think that’s the thing about it: the not knowing. It’s like I’m racing, like my life is the race, and every decision I make is life or death. There’s no in-between, and there’s no time to think because I’m already in the car, it’s already going, and I can’t stop. And I won’t know until I get to the end whether I did the right thing, or whether the whole thing is going to go up in flames.”

“One empathizes,” Jughead muttered, but said no more than that.

“It used to seem like there was so much time,” she said. “You know? For do-overs or second chances. Now everything I do is so…final.” She swallowed hard, like just thinking about it was enough to make her nervous. “Tonight, it was like…”

“Tonight, what?”

“…like everything was going off the cliff, in slow motion,” she said. By  _everything_ , it was somehow clear to Jughead that she didn’t mean  _everything_ : she meant  _them_. And maybe the Chuck thing. And the Archie-Veronica thing. Either way.

“It didn’t,” he said, very quietly. He worked his shoe against her shoe, and put his leg against her leg. They aligned warmly, despite his knee towering over hers. “It just-” He waved a hand weakly around his face, to take the place of words, and she reached for it, took it, and held his fingers to her lips.

They were cold.

She was not.

And then someone knocked on the door.

Archie didn’t really wait before coming in, and Veronica didn’t wait long before following him: they sort of piled through the doorway like two giggling planks of wood falling together. They tried to backtrack almost immediately.

“Jug,” Archie said, at the same time that Veronica said, “Betty!” The four of them went still as bedposts for a split second, and then Jughead was scrambling to his feet.

“I’m gonna…go,” he said.

Archie made some kind of weak protest and Veronica mostly hid behind him, but Jughead pulled a jacket off the bed and was halfway out the door before Betty could even get off the ground. He held himself back, though, with a hand on the wall as he went through.

“Oversocialization makes me hungry,” he said, right to Betty and to nobody else. It was an invitation she hadn’t expected to get. Not tonight, for sure; and an hour ago? Maybe never again. She blinked, then stumbled to her feet.

“Everything makes you hungry,” she said, because it sounded right.

Her foot had fallen asleep. Every step toward Jughead was excruciating and tingly, and Archie and Veronica were watching her with these weird paranoid-and-smug-at-the-same-time expressions, and she was pretty sure she knew why but somehow it didn’t matter.

She limped across the room on her numb foot to where Jughead filled the doorframe.

“I have to find my sweater,” she said, because she  _did_  need to find her sweater, but also because she wanted to fill the space where Archie could say something, where Veronica could ask a question, where these things could catch her jacket on the door handle.

Jughead draped his coat over her shoulders and pulled her by its arms out of the room. 

Behind them, Archie’s door closed from the inside.

"You can use mine," he said, steering her away, down the hall.

 


End file.
